


just so long and long enough

by sajere1



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Complicated Feelings About Lucy Stillman, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, OR IS IT, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26037895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: Desmond throws himself over the couch, slouching headfirst into Shaun’s legs as he lets his body hang loosely over the back. “I want to piss off my dad,” he says, muffled into the cushion that his face is slowly melting into. “You love pissing people off. Pretend I’m dating a dude on top of that and he’ll stop talking to me in, like, the first hour.”Shaun – who has not made any room whatsoever to aid Desmond’s pathetic attempts at making space on the couch, because he is a bastard – scowls, but doesn’t look up from his phone. “Hmm,” he hums noncommittally.Desmond rolls his eyes. “If you do it, I’ll do your laundry for a month.”Desmond pulls his face out of the couch to fix him with The Pout. The Pout that would make a small army swear pacifism and a monk go alcoholic. The Pout that Shaun, despite himself, is fully in love with.“…I’m listening,” he finally says.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Past Desmond Miles/Lucy Stillman, Shaun Hastings/Desmond Miles
Comments: 17
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

“Did you get this idea from fanfiction?”

“No I did _not,_ ” Desmond says over the sound of punching numbers into the microwave. 

Shaun levels him a quick once-over from his position, draped across the couch like some especially obnoxious renaissance painting. _Portrait of a Jackoff._ “You got this from _Rebecca’s_ fanfiction,” he accuses, lips curling into a sneer.

“No! Why would you think that?” Desmond scowls at Shaun as he makes his way over from the open kitchenette, leaning forward to rest his weight on the back of the couch. “And – isn’t fanfic about people, like, actually fucking? Why would you fake it then? That’s stupid.”

Shaun stares at Desmond for a long moment. The desperate hope that Desmond is just fucking with him crumbles at the absolute sincerity of his expression. Good bleeding Christ. He opens his mouth, considers telling Desmond how his cultural ignorance is truly, low as it is, the least of his many problems. Then, abruptly, he gives up on it, sighs, and goes back to scrolling through Instagram on his phone. “You did get the idea from Rebecca, though.”

“Does it matter?” Desmond throws himself over the couch, slouching headfirst into Shaun’s legs as he lets his body hang loosely over the back. Shaun wants to say yes, of course it matters, because Desmond may not know what ‘fake dating’ tends to beget in fiction but Rebecca does and if she’s doing what Shaun thinks she’s doing he’s going to strangle her, but Desmond plows on. “I want to piss off my dad,” he says, muffled into the cushion that his face is slowly melting into. “You love pissing people off. Pretend I’m dating a dude on top of that and he’ll stop talking to me in, like, the first hour.”

Shaun – who has not made any room whatsoever to aid Desmond’s pathetic attempts at making space on the couch, because he is a bastard – scowls, but doesn’t look up from his phone. “Hmm,” he hums noncommittally.

Desmond rolls his eyes. “If you do it, I’ll do your laundry for a month.”

The silence is long enough that the microwave beeps its final tune, that Desmond pulls his face out of the couch to fix him with The Pout. The Pout that would make a small army swear pacifism and a monk go alcoholic. The Pout that Shaun, despite himself, is fully in love with.

“…I’m listening,” he finally says.

Desmond’s face splits into a grin, just as stunning (and conniving, Shaun thinks to himself, scowling as his blasted heart flutters). “Also there’ll be wine?”

“Why will there be wine at your family reunion?”

Desmond sighs and rolls directly off the couch, landing on the floor with the soft thud of self-destructive laziness. “Not just a family reunion,” he mutters into the carpet before doing a push-up to get himself off the ground. Shaun discreetly eyes the way his back muscles move under his shirt. “M’ parents are getting married again.”

Shaun quirks an eyebrow. “At the same time?”

“Well, yeah, they’re re-marrying each other.”

Shaun takes the short minute as Desmond retrieves his hot pocket to consider this information. “Not to be a Debbie Downer,” he says, grudgingly lifting his legs to give Desmond room to sit on the couch regularly this time, dropping his feet back onto Desmond’s lap when he’s sat as compromise revenge, “but that didn’t exactly go stellar the first time, yeah?”

Desmond snorts. “You’re telling me,” he says through a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese.

Shaun sets his phone on his stomach and leans his head on the couch arm - Christ, they really do need a new one, there's now cushion at all between his head and the wood - to turn the situation over in his head. Weighing each pro and con against each other comes up, distressingly, fairly even. There’s free food – but he has to wear a suit. He gets to annoy someone on purpose – but he will probably be annoyed by many others on accident. He’ll get a break from his thesis – but he’ll be behind when he gets back. He gets to hang out with Desmond – but he has to hang out with _Desmond._

His responsible side comes very near to winning out. Well – his responsible side and his desire to cut any attempts Rebecca might make to encourage Shaun’s infuriating little crush off at the pass. But as he’s opening his mouth to say, nah, mate, you’re on your own, maybe just tell your dad to piss off like a normal person, Desmond has stopped chewing to say, very quietly, “I don’t want people to talk about Lucy around me.”

Shaun’s mouth hangs open for another moment and then clicks shut. Desmond has stopped chewing, and is now staring mournfully at the inside of his hot pocket, as if he can divine the future from the pattern of cheese inside it. “They’d be – ugh, they’d try to reassure me.” Desmond makes a face. “But – if they thought – it’d be awkward, to bring up an ex around a new partner. So.” Desmond looks at Shaun again with those stupid puppy dog eyes – quickly looks away, as if he hadn’t wanted Shaun to see it, as if he isn’t a master manipulator that knows exactly how to make his roommate do whatever he wants. In the cramped space they call a living area, brimming with Shaun's papers and Rebecca's equipment and Desmond's games, his frame seems to be shrunk in on itself, his presence reduced to the quiet heat his hot pocket radiates. “I’d…I’d appreciate it.”

Shaun takes a moment to curse Lucy, Desmond, Rebecca, Desmond’s family, himself, and any god he can care to name off the top of his head. Then he sighs, shakes his head, and says, “When’s it happening?” with a defeated finality.

Shaun’s heart jumps when Desmond’s bright smile returns, relief painted in every corner of his face. Shaun scowls as Desmond begins to harp about plans, and travel, and various things he’ll need for the trip, and where in the fuck is his phone, Shaun, did he leave it in the kitchen? Did you see him put it down? Shit, he’s so fucking forgetful, how you know where everything is in the apartment is beyond him, and do you want to watch something? Rebecca’s been rambling about another lesbian cartoon and it’d be nice to actually watch the things she’s talking about for once – or, like, if that sucks, he can just throw It’s Always Sunny up again, that’s a good background show.

_Stuff it,_ Shaun whispers to his heart as it begins a full calisthenics routine. His heart, the contrary bastard, just flips him the bird and smiles at Desmond.

* * *

He manages to snag Rebecca from the arm when she gets in from the shop, tugs her to the kitchen, and hisses, “You absolute monster, I know what you’re doing and I’m _not happy about it.”_

Rebecca shakes him off with ease. “I’ve been home for, like, half a minute,” she says. She sounds exhausted, but the happy kind – satisfied exhausted, where she’s been working all day on a project she really likes, not just fixing shit for the first guy who slapped down enough money to afford her. “Yes, Shaun, it’s great to be home. I had a great day at work. I’d love to talk about dinner, I’m thinking pizza, what about you?”

“You know what I’m bloody well talking about!” Shaun stresses. Rebecca ignores his melodramatics with the apathy that only someone who’s known Shaun since high school could muster, pushing past him to open the fridge. He glances nervously over the couch at the door of the flat – Desmond left for his shift at the bar an hour ago, but Shaun’s primary claim to fame after the whole being kind of a jerk thing is being kind of a _paranoid_ jerk. “You and your – your _fanfic tropes,_ as you try to, I don’t know, to puppeteer my life from the shadows, is – is manipulative and evil, and I’m onto you. I’m onto your tricks.”

Rebecca, who has been standing in front of the fridge, staring without seeing, squints, first at a ketchup bottle, and then at Shaun, and then back at the ketchup bottle. “What the fuck are you talking about.”

“Desmond’s fake dating plan!” Shaun throws his arms up.

Rebecca jerks back so sharply that she almost knocks Shaun with her elbow, bewildered. “His what? Desmond is – “ Her face abruptly goes from shock to absolute, shit eating delight, eyebrows pulled all the way up into her hat as her lips slowly crack into a grin. “Oh my god, you and Desmond are fake dating?”

“Shut up!” Shaun stresses. Rebecca laughs, turning back to the fridge. “You fucking – you know what you did, you bloody, just, you absolute – “

“Dude, this is not my fault. I was just talking about something I was writing – “

_“So it was you!”_ Shaun shrieks at a decibel previously unreached by human vocal chords.

Rebecca pretends not to hear. “ – I mean, I was just, like, bouncing ideas around and shit, if he got inspired, you know, that’s not my fault, I’m just the messenger.” She finally resigns herself to grabbing the box of waffles that Shaun knew she would be using for dinner, setting them on the counter and leaning around him to plug the toaster in. She’s snickering at him. He hates her. “Come on, man, don’t hold back now, I gotta know the deets, how is Desmond accidentally winning your heart this time?”

Shaun groans. He is, despite himself, a bit of a gossip monger – after all, what is history but gossiping really hard about everyone who’s ever lived – but in 5 BB (months Before Break-up), he certainly hadn’t been able to confide in Lucy or, Heavens forbid, Desmond about his stupid crush. Now, 2 AB (months After Break-up), she knows too much to find another confidante. What, like he’s gonna take the time to explain to someone else how Desmond is the bane of his existence and also he wants to grow old and boring with the man? It’s hard enough for him.

“His parents are remarrying,” he sighs, flourishing dramatically to a seat in the little rickety table they use when they want to pretend they actually dine like fancy people instead of eating take out on the couch. “He doesn’t want to deal with questions about Lucy, and he thinks pretending to have a partner will get people off his back. Also, he wants to annoy his dad.”

“You _are_ good at annoying people.”

“I’m the best at annoying people,” Shaun says, a bit miffed to have his credentials unintentionally questioned. Then he groans and leans his head back. “People will ask us questions. _Couple_ questions. With _words._ ”

“You can say no,” Rebecca points out, flopping into the seat across from him as she waits for her waffles to toast.

“He pouted, Rebecca.”

Rebecca grins. “I mean,” she says, tapping her chin thoughtfully, “even then, though, like – even if you do it, it’s not like most couples are that affectionate. Especially new ones, and especially around family. You guys are so familiar you probably won’t have to act any different at all.”

“I know that,” Shaun grumbles. “It’s not – I mean, I know. Just – “ He grimaces. “People will look at us. And they’ll – they’ll think it.”

Shaun’s not exactly stellar at reading people, but he’s known Rebecca for long enough that he can tell when she reaches out to take his hand, it’s intended to be a comforting thing. He politely allows her to hold his hand. “I could do it?” she offers. “If it’s really gonna bother you. I bet Des wouldn’t care.”

Shaun looks meaningfully at the lesbian flags sown into Rebecca’s hat, jacket, and knapsack. “Yes, you could certainly convince people you and Desmond are fucking.”

Rebecca punches him on the arm. “Shut up. Just say no, then. I mean – he’ll understand. You know? If it’s really gonna be too much.”

Shaun considers it for a moment, hesitant. Another chance for his responsible side to win it. It’s much easier to talk to Rebecca about it with a clear head than it was Desmond – if he decides no here, he can really stick to it, can steel himself to face Desmond’s sad eyes later with more conviction. But...

“I don’t want him to be alone,” Shaun admits after a long moment. “…It’s stupid.”

Rebecca smiles at him again, but it’s different in a way he can’t place. “No it’s not,” she hums. She pats the back of his hand one more time before she gets up to retrieve her waffles, which Shaun had not heard pop out. “It’s nice. You’re nice.”

“This is heresy.”

“You help people,” Rebecca says smugly. “You’re a _good person.”_

“I could sue you for slander.”

Rebecca ruffles his hair as she passes back to her seat, and he takes care to kick her chair once he’s finished making indignant noise and swatting her back to her food. He runs a hand through his hair as he stands, glancing over where Rebecca eats the first waffle plain with her hands, like she’s eating a loaf of bread or something.

“Savage,” he mutters half-heartedly. Rebecca just waggles her eyebrows at him as he heads to his room.

Shaun closes the door behind him. Considers his situation, and the fact that he has now committed to it twice, in face of clear evidence that he should not, and that his stupid bloody emotions are going to be ruined. Lies facedown on his bed.

“Fuck,” Shaun groans to himself, and yeah, that about sums it up.


	2. Chapter 2

They consider dragging Rebecca to the wedding, but they decide against it almost immediately for several reasons. Firstly, to preserve the fragile fiction of Shaun and Desmond’s fake relationship. Secondly, because Desmond is adamant about a very specific Bro Code he immediately establishes with all friends under sacred ritual, one which says that you Never Ever Fuck A Bro’s Family Member, and Rebecca is too horny to not immediately fuck Desmond’s favorite cousin, Layla. (Rebecca had responded to this with much eyebrow wiggling, so Shaun’s protests about bro codes being stupid were pretty much moot.) 

Most importantly, though, is that two-thirds of the team vacating the shitty, arguably architecturally unstable building they call home for a full week finally provides an excuse to ask around about potential roommates. It was the kind of thing that started out touchy when Lucy left but very quickly became too financially pressing to avoid, and Shaun has been at his wit’s end for a while now trying to make Rebecca bring it up. Desmond, of course, had been instantly agreeable to a fourth flat mate. The chance to show potential roomies around without the three of them getting in each other’s way – too good to pass up. And that means someone to stay behind to show the house off.

It also, of course, requires making the place somewhat presentable before they leave, for the sake of convincing someone to live with them. Which means – ugh – cleaning.

Desmond had asked a good month and a half in advance, thankfully – plenty of time for the three of them, in various shifts and starts, to usher the flat into something like order. After a disastrous experience half a year ago where Rebecca and Desmond’s mutual messiness had resulted in the accidental replacement of her “recreational pills” with his anti-psychotic medication, the general house policy is to keep messes confined to bedrooms, which means most of the cleaning is also done separately. Some things, though, bleed out into the main area. The dreaded team bonding exercise is, in the end, impossible to avoid.

“We’re gonna have to move all the shit back out of the D&D room,” Desmond pipes up rudely in the middle of Shaun’s thought process, barely audible from within the small mountain of video game cases that he’s organizing.

Most of Desmond’s work has been sorting through the things that he had shoved into drawers immediately post-break up that reminded him too much of Lucy at the time. That’s emotionally taxing, though, and also Shaun could not stand to look at Desmond’s carefully curated collection of the shittiest possible games he could find for 360 for another goddamn minute, so he’s been dragged out for Helping With The Main Area purposes. No one needs to own that many copies of _Rambo: The Video Game._ No one needs to own _any_ copies of _Rambo: The Video Game._

“Over my dead body,” Shaun says, not looking away from his painstaking attempts to rearrange their storage closet so they have more space. The place they rent is two-story, with two bedrooms on each floor, a main room downstairs that functions as both kitchen and living room, and a bathroom upstairs between Rebecca and Shaun’s rooms. When Lucy and Desmond had started dating, it had seemed natural to gut her room and turn it into something more useful – namely, a room to be nerds in. “I like the D&D room. It’s where D&D happens.”

“D&D can happen in other places,” Desmond says, because Desmond is an idiot who doesn’t understand just how many notes Shaun is keeping stored up for worldbuilding purposes behind his DM screen. “Unless the new roommate wants to share a bed with me, too, we kinda need the space.”

“Dibs if she’s hot,” Rebecca calls across the kitchenette.

“Sexist pigs,” Shaun says. “Only interested in whether a woman’s hot. I would gladly sleep next to any woman in the world to maintain the D&D area, like the true martyr I am, and the fact neither of you would take that bullet disgusts me. Where is your honor? Your love for the game?”

“I wasn’t only interested in whether a woman’s hot,” Desmond protests. “If it’s a hot dude, he can sleep with me. I’m equal-opportunity horny.”

Shaun purses his lips to keep from smiling. He directs his attention back to the impossible tetris of boxes weighing down their washer and dryer. The closet is the same plain beige that they’re forced to keep all the walls if they want to keep their damage deposit, but unlike the rest of the house, they haven’t bothered to decorate this room at all. Shaun is willing to put up with Clay’s weird abstract paintings in the main area for the sake of household peace, but there is a certain relief in being in a room where there are no blood metaphors about. He takes a moment to steel himself before he finally commits to one of the boxes. He heaves it off the top of the stack with a grunt, staggering into the wall under its weight, and carefully pries his fingers around to set it in the doorway with a huff of effort. He tugs the flaps off the box top apart, peering in to see what could possibly be so important they had to keep it and so bloody heavy at the same time –

He laughs so hard that Rebecca pops her head in from the kitchenette, looking mildly concerned, saying “What’d you find?” and Shaun can only point and say “It’s the fucking animus, get over here and take this monstrosity away from me,” half-hysterical.

The animus is a sad assortment of wires and pieces now, nothing like the complex project Rebecca had once built overtop an exercise chair, but her face still lights up when she sees it. _“Baby!_ ” she gasps, sweeping the box up to cradle in her arms, as if it isn’t half her body weight. “Oh, I knew they didn’t really throw you out, I’ve missed you so much.”

Desmond’s head pops around the corner to see what’s going on, and all of a sudden there are Too Many People In Shaun’s Space. “Holy shit. Did we have the whole fuckin’ thing all along?” Desmond says, bemused, as Shaun walks him back into the main area, craning his neck around to watch Rebecca make kissy faces at the box.

“It’s all the major components!” Rebecca says, gleefully dumping the entire contents of the box on the floor. It’s largely wires, with a few messy, half-finished sections of the larger blueprint hacked off in funky places.

The animus is notable in that it is how they met Desmond and not much else. It was a pet project that Rebecca had started all the way back when she was a teenager and VR was a distant dream, and had, apparently, informed her desire to go into coding as a result (and thus resulted her current job in fixing rare hardware). At some point in their friendship, Lucy had learned about it and gotten excited about the potential of what Rebecca’s specific ideas for nerves and imitating real-life circumstances on a full-body level could mean on a medical perspective, and so they had sent out a call for any willing test subjects on a meager pay. Desmond, local bartender, had responded, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Shaun had never been too especially involved in the project beyond living in the house with the person, and later the team, working on it. He’d offered his ideas on what types of games they should make, all of which Lucy had shot down with gusto. Patiently observed Clay’s active attempts to sabotage the whole project back before they wanted to go to the effort of actually paying a tester. Mostly, though, he had just kind of existed in its vicinity, and had been appropriately unemotive when it came to the untimely end of discovering that the work in progress had disappeared en masse – presumably, after being mistaken for garbage and taken to the dump.

That had been a year ago, at least. And much as Rebecca had despaired the loss of her life’s work, there’s still something concerning about the manic glee in her eye now that it’s been recovered. “This is still workable,” she hums, stroking her chin thoughtfully. Disturbing. “Little bit of elbow grease, rewire the main console here – if we could get another chair around the same size…”

“This takes me the fuck back,” Desmond says. He’s dropped onto the couch – Shaun doesn’t know where in being shoved to the main room he’d managed to snag a piece of the wiring, but he did, tossing the unfinished headpiece back and forth in his hands. “I forgot how cyberpunk this shit was.”

“Cyberpunk’s cool!”

Shaun buries his face in his hands. “We have work to do,” he moans. Desmond aim a half-hearted kick at his shin. “We have to clean. The blasted thing’s broken.”

“You’re just jealous ‘cause you never got to try it,” Desmond says.

“It was never worth trying.”

Rebecca makes an offended noise and cradles the bulky electrical equipment close to her chest, as if the damned thing has ears she can cover. “Don’t listen to him, baby,” she coos to it, sending him a dark look. “He doesn’t understand you.”

Shaun flaps his hand at her. “You start talking in Smeagol voice, I’m out,” he warns.

Desmond and Rebecca settle into inane chatter about the animus’ miraculous reappearance and the memories that come with it that Shaun tunes out. With a beleaguered sigh, he pulls the stack of video games that Desmond was working through over to himself and begins the arduous task of checking which have discs in them, tossing the empties to one side.

After about ten minutes, he gets fed up. He tosses an empty copy of Banjo Tooie at Desmond’s fat head. “We have shit to do, come on.”

Desmond ducks with ease and levels him a languid grin. “Come on, Shaun, you don’t miss when we were working on the animus at all?” he wheedles. He’s sprawled himself across the couch like a bad imitation of an artistic muse, arm dangling carelessly off the side. “Don’t miss that stage of your life?”

“No,” Shaun says. “My hair was shit.”

“Your hair was fine,” Rebecca says. Shaun gives her a suitably unimpressed look.

“You’re a historian,” Desmond insists, like he’s actually got a bloody point to this and isn’t just trying to score some more break time out of the issue. “You don’t want to talk about memories? Your personal history?”

“No.”

There’s a moment, after he says it, where the room is silent, like Desmond is expecting Shaun to follow it up with a quip. He doesn’t. After an awkward second, Desmond frowns. “…hmm,” he says.

“Don’t think too hard, your face’ll get stuck that way,” Shaun says. “Are you reading to get back to work now or not?”

Desmond grumbles under his breath, but he makes his way back across the room. He plops down next to the stack, and they return to an easy work, occasionally tossing jibes between them as Rebecca finally sets the animus aside on the counter and takes over Shaun’s place in the storage closet. But Shaun doesn’t miss the puzzled looks Desmond is shooting at him – eyebrows all wrinkled, face puffed out.

Well, Desmond can just keep on thinking, then. It’s no skin off Shaun’s back if he wants to be disappointed.

* * *

The only vehicle owned between Desmond and Shaun is the old motorcycle Desmond spent his spare time and most of his funds from the last decade fixing up, which can’t possibly carry any amount of luggage on a trip, so they end up borrowing Rebecca’s unfeasibly large truck for their cross-country haul. Desmond complains about leaving it, but Shaun is secretly thankful, because Desmond on a motorcycle has never failed to give him a minor heart attack. He can’t imagine what his ridiculous libido would do if he had to cling to Desmond on the back of one for a multi-hour trip. So instead, they pile their things in the white Ford and head out, a good week and a day before the wedding. It’s about an eight-hour trip – not quite far enough out to justify a flight, but certainly far enough that Shaun can be irritable about having to drive the whole thing (what type of idiot has a motorcycle license but not a regular driver’s license??). They pile in early in the morning, remind Rebecca to actually remember when people are coming to look at the place, grab some coffee, and zip onto the road.

Somewhere between fast-food and their second gas stop, Desmond starts to describe his family members – mostly, he says, for Shaun’s benefit, so that Shaun will stop with the weird conspiracy theories that Desmond’s family is actually a mob front. (It won’t stop Shaun, of course, but it’s cute that he’s trying.) “You’ll like Connor,” he says, matter-of-fact as he chews on some of his fries. “Huge revolutionary war buff. Hates the Founding Fathers.”

“Good, they were inept, racist bastards,” Shaun says, without looking away from the road.

Desmond makes the noise that he always makes when Shaun starts talking about historical figures he hates. “His dad’s cool, too. Adopted dad – his dad that’s actually related to us sucks, Achilles is dope as hell and invited to all our reunions in his place.” Desmond points a fry dramatically at him. “If you see Haytham, annoy him like you’ve annoyed before. Then come find me so I can kick his ass.”

Shaun grunts to show that he’s listening. In truth, this is a helpful exercise – even though he and Desmond aren’t actually dating, Shaun still has the absurd desire to make sure Desmond’s family approves of him and all the anxieties that go with it. He suspects Desmond knows this and is being intentionally helpful. It is this kind of silent kindness that they do to each other and then refuse to acknowledge ever that has built the wonderful, extremely irritating friendship that Shaun treasures. “Anything else to remember about him?”

Desmond chews thoughtfully. “Uh, his actual name is Ratonhnhaké:ton. He won’t expect you to use it? Connor’s his, like, white guy name. But you might hear other people in the family call him that.” And, after a moment – “Be careful about talking about tribes with him. You can use his white people name, but you can’t use those white people names. It’ll probably come up, knowing you nerds.”

“Got it.” He’d need to look up the proper terminology, practice its pronunciation – American history has never been his focus, got to keep up the appearances of hating Yankees and all that. “Connor, revolutionary war, check terminology before we get there. Any other favorites?”

Desmond hums under his breath – not quite in tune with the radio, which is playing some classic rock station that has the least fuzz in this area, but not too far off-pitch. “Leo,” he says after a moment. “Art history major. Focused on the Renaissance. But he’s not actually family, he just follows Ezio.”

Ezio… “That’s the Italian cousin? Father’s side?”

“Yeah. Leo’s basically family at this point, though, he’s been coming to reunions for years.” Desmond waves a hand dismissively towards the car window, where the Rocky Mountains are just visible as they drive further upstate. “Ezio used to bring girlfriends, I think? But then some of the family got weird about him always having a different girl, so he started bringing Leonardo. They’ve been best friends forever – and we _aren’t asking them whether or not they fuck,”_ he adds, sitting up very straight for a moment, “because it is their business and they will talk about it when they’re ready to talk about it.”

Shaun casts a quick, amused glance at Desmond’s serious expression out the corner of his eye. “I will be extremely heterosexual around both of them,” he promises. “I won’t mention sucking dick even once.”

Desmond pats his arm, mock appreciatively, as he says, “You’re always here for me in my times of need.” Shaun does his best not to tense up at the contact. Desmond doesn’t seem to notice, plowing on without comment. “Claudia does take bets on whether this’ll be the family meeting they come out, though. It’s very professional. Very anonymous. Not that I would know anything about that.”

“Desmond.”

Desmond puts up both of his hands in a gesture of innocence. Shaun’s eyes are on the road, but he can imagine Desmond’s expression – the don’t-look-at-me-I’m-innocent expression, puppy dog eyes, sweet look, and the unfortunate, incriminating tug on the edge of his lips. Shaun keeps his eyes firmly on the road, avoiding the rush of fondness that hits him at even the thought of it.

They settle into an easy silence for a few minutes, Desmond chewing on the last of his meal. Silence is rare with Desmond – he’ll talk about pretty much anything to avoid it, and that includes resorting to monologue if necessary – so Shaun just hums along to the radio and tries to enjoy it while it lasts.

Sure enough, within minutes Shaun can feel Desmond’s gaze flickering, curious, to the side of his face. Shaun fights the urge to roll his eyes. It’s a different kind of look than he’s used to getting from Desmond, somehow – a thought that makes Shaun feel weird, in the pit of his stomach. “…so,” Desmond finally says. His voice is intentionally casual in that way something can only be when someone is trying very hard to seem casual. “I’ve told you about my family.”

Shaun’s eyebrows inch up his forehead. “That you have.”

“You know,” Desmond presses, “it’s weird that I’ve never heard anything about your family. In, like, the whole time we’ve known each other.”

Oh, Christ. “That’s because I don’t talk about them,” he says curtly, praying silently that the lack of his usual snark will signal to Desmond that this is not a thing to talk about.

Unfortunately, Desmond, as ever, has all the social grace of a Martian caveman unearthed and immediately sent on a blind date. “Yeah, you don’t talk about them,” Desmond says. “Like – at all. Or, like anything about you, except school stuff. I don’t know your birthday. Isn’t that weird? We’ve known each other for, like, a year. I don’t even know where you grew up. Your name could be fake and I would have no idea.”

“You’ve caught me,” Shaun deadpans. “I’m in Witness Protection. At the tender age of twelve, I encountered a UFO, and the British government will do anything to see me silenced.”

“Shaun,” Desmond says, a little impatiently.

“Desmond,” he mimics back.

Desmond scowls at him. He seems to recognize that the appeal to credibility isn’t working and switches gears. “Look,” he says, voice softer, “I just think, if we’re going to pretend to be, like, super in love, I would know where you grew up, y’know? Like, if we want to be a convincing couple.”

It’s an extremely low blow, not that Desmond would know that, so Shaun doesn’t feel too bad about how waspish his voice comes out. “Well, then, it’s lucky we’re not _super in love,_ then, are we? Didn’t realize you wanted to pimp me out as well as ruining your father’s wedding day, or I would’ve charged extra, _darling.”_

Desmond physically recoils – sets his lips into a hard line and shakes himself back into it. “Jesus, Shaun, there’s no need to be a douche about it, I was just asking.”

“And I told you no,” Shaun snarls. “So _stop. Asking.”_

The car settles into an uncomfortable silence other than the absurdity that is Van Halen crooning through the stereo. They sit in frosty silence for a while, Desmond glaring at other cares out the window and Shaun committing himself, full-body, to the wheel and the road ahead of him.

Within an hour, Desmond offers quietly to change the radio. Shaun – for once, recognizing the silent apology for what it is – inclines his head as permission. It doesn’t take long for them to return to chatting away like old women gossiping at a knitting circle, arguing around each other’s heads about Shaun’s thesis, and whether they need to text Rebecca when they get there, and why Shaun isn’t following the GPS perfectly.

It’s easy to fall into. But Shaun knows, just fucking knows, that this isn’t over. And that, on top of the nerves from playing a fake-boyfriend for Desmond’s real-family –

Well, Shaun thinks, a little bitterly, at least if everything goes to shit, he’ll get to tell himself _I told you so._

**Author's Note:**

> title from the poem "[as freedom is a breakfastfood...]" by e.e. cummings.
> 
> still not totally sure whether this'll end up being explicit or not, so maybe keep an eye on the rating; i'll try to let y'all know in the notes if it changes. i was GOING to wait until i had this entirely finished to publish this, but i needed to post Something to motivate myself to keep powering through brotherhood, and the drabble i have abt monteriggioni got. way longer than i expected whoops. SO some good old-fashioned self indulgence!
> 
> on tumblr and twitter @pechebeche, if you want to hear me talking about shaundes Constantly and complaining abt the ac series


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